April 28, 2017
Issue 12, Volume 10
It's All About the Choices!     
          
Greetings and Happy Friday

Please enjoy our newsletter!
 
News Items:
  • Special Education Often An Uphill Battle For Military Families
  • More Risks on Playground Linked to Happier Children
  • Scientists Identify How the Brain Predicts Speech
  • Study Backs Therapeutic Benefits Of Horseback Riding
  • Scientists Create Artificial Womb That Could Help Prematurely Born Babies
  • How do Babies Coordinate Gestures, Vocalization? 
PediaStaff News and Hot Jobs 
  • Hot Job: Supervising SLP - Dallas/Fort Worth, TX
  • Hot Job: Outpatient Pediatric SLP - Novato, CA
  • Early Intervention OT - Yonkers, NY
Therapy Activities, Tips and Resources
  • Paint the Pasta! Creative Noodle Painting for Kids
  • Product Review: Data-Driven Solution to Change Student Behavior
  • Speechie Freebie! Hands Up for Homophones
Articles and Special Features 
  • Educator's Corner: Pull Words Off the Page to Promote Learning
  • OT Corner: 5 Facts About Metacognition - What IS It?
  • Sensory Corner: Sensory Modulation and Developmental Trauma
  • AAC Corner: Behavioral Supports for Young Children
Feel free to contact us with any questions about our openings or items in these pages. Have you discovered our RSS feed? Click on the orange button below to subscribe to all our openings and have them delivered to your Feed Reader!  Don't have an RSS Feed Reader set up? Sign up at Blogtrottr and have our blog posts delivered right to your email.

Have a great weekend and Take Care!

Heidi Kay and the PediaStaff Team
8

The Career Center

The links to the right are "live" and reflect the most recent SLP, OT, PT and related assistant jobs, and ALL our Bilingual and School Psychology Jobs. 
Girl
To further narrow your search by state,
setting, bilingual, or term, use the
check boxes drop down menus.

If a particular search is returning
no hits it is possible that we do
not currently have new openings for
you with that selection criteria.

To see ALL our openings
click HERE and further narrow your search.
Recent Occupational Therapist and COTA Jobs 

Special Education Often An Uphill Battle For Military Families
[Source:  Disability Scoop]

When Navy Capt. Cassidy Norman was assigned executive officer of the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman, he and his wife, Michelle, were relieved. His career path was taking them back to Virginia Beach - where they'd lived before and knew to be a good fit for their daughter with severe disabilities.

Read the Rest of This Article Through a Link on our Blog
More Risks on Playground Linked to Happier Children
[Source:  Medical X-Press]
 
Children from schools with greater risk and challenge in the playground environment report being happier at school and playing with more children, according to a study published online April 24 in Pediatrics.
 
Victoria L. Farmer, Ph.D., from the University of Otago in New Zealand, and colleagues conducted a two-year cluster-randomized controlled trial in which eight control schools were asked to not change their play environment, while eight intervention schools increased opportunities for risk and challenge 
 
Read the Rest of This Article Through a Link on our Blog
Scientists Identify How the Brain Predicts Speech
[Source:  Medical X-Press]
 
An international collaboration of neuroscientists has shed light on how the brain helps us to predict what is coming next in speech.
 
In the study, publishing on April 25 in the open access journal PLOS Biology scientists from Newcastle University, UK, and a neurosurgery group at the University of Iowa, USA, report that they have discovered mechanisms in the brain's auditory cortex involved in processing speech and predicting upcoming words, which is essentially unchanged.
 
Read the Rest of this Article Through a Link our Blog 
Study Backs Therapeutic Benefits Of Horseback Riding
[Source:  Disability Scoop]
 
Horseback riding is frequently offered for people with developmental disabilities and now a new analysis suggests that the activity really does have a therapeutic benefit.
 
In a  review of existing studies, researchers found that horseback riding interventions helped boost strength, balance and other skills for both children and adults with a range of physical and developmental disabilities.

Read the Rest of this Article Through a Link our Blog
Scientists Create Artificial Womb That Could Help Premature Babies
[Source:  NPR.org]

Scientists have created an "artificial womb" in the hopes of someday using the device to save babies born extremely prematurely.

So far the device has only been tested on fetal lambs. A study published Tuesday involving eight animals found the device appears effective at enabling very premature fetuses to develop normally for about a month.

"We've been extremely successful in replacing the conditions in the womb in our lamb model," says Alan Flake a fetal surgeon at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia who led the study published in the journal Nature Communications.
 
Read the Rest of this Article Through a Link our Blog 
How do Babies Coordinate Gestures, Vocalization?
[Source:  Science Daily]
 
Asier Romero-Andonegi, Aintzane Etxebarria-Lejarreta, Ainara Romero-Andonegi and Irati de Pablo-Delgado, lecturers and researchers at the UPV/EHU's University College of Teacher Training in Bilbao, have studied how 9 to 13-month-old babies tackle the shift from early babbling to the use of combinations of gestures and speech. The work "The interrelation of gestures and vocalization in early communication functions: Evidence from Basque language" has been published in the important linguistics journal Signos.

Read the Rest of this Article Through a Link our Blog
Supervising Speech Language-Pathologist needed in the Dallas area (Lancaster, Oak Cliff, Cedar Hill) part time and possibly building to full time.
 
*  Hours and days are flexible (busiest times are between 8-1PM and 3-6PM)  but typically the therapists work Monday through Thursday and leaves Friday open for documentation, makeup visits, evaluations, etc....

Learn About / Apply for This Job on our Blog
We are seeking an independent Speech-Language Pathologist to join a group of seasoned practitioners in this private practice in Novato.
 
*  Part time needed:  1.5 - 2 days a week on your schedule
*  Join an existing team of OT and Speech Language Pathologists as the caseloads are growing.

Learn About / Apply for This Job on our Blog
We are searching for an Occupational Therapist to conduct evaluations, assessment and treatment of children in Westchester County, NY. This opportunity is best suited to the self-starting, independent thinker. It is the perfect position for the therapist who enjoys charting his/her own destiny and impacting children and families in a positive way.

Learn About / Apply for This Job on our Blog 
[Source:  Discovering Hidden Potential]
 
As a School Psychologist and Special Education coordinator, I participated in hundreds of meetings and noticed a common problem when it came to making and charting behavior plans.  The general education teacher was often times left to create a behavior chart and bring data back to the next meeting regarding the progress of the behavior plan.  

For even an experienced teacher, this task is an extra responsibility on top of dozens of other requirements and paperwork that must be completed.  A novice teacher may leave this meeting lost, confused and overwhelmed altogether.  So, why not have a complete charting system ready to give to 

Read the Rest of this Product Review Through a Link on our Blog
Speechie Freebie! Hands Up for Homophones  
Editor's Note:  Here is a great freebie posted a couple of weeks ago!
 
[Source:  Teach Speech 365 via Speechie Freebies]
 
It's April!!  For me, spring break is tantalizing close. It's been a long winter of only one snow day and a couple 2 hour delays. I think the students and staff are more than ready for a little break.
 
Today I'm bringing you a freebie that targets homophones. All worksheets are no prep, so what could be better than that?

Download These Freebies Through a Link on our Blog
Educator's Corner: Pull Words Off the Page to Promote Learning
[Source: Edutopia]
 
Students need opportunities to research, process, connect with, and use content-area and domain-specific vocabulary beyond simply making a list of words and writing their definitions. Through listening to and connecting with one another via these exercises, your students can take their vocabulary knowledge to the next level.


OT Corner:  5 Facts About Metacognition - What IS It?
[Source:  The Pocket OT]
 
Who are you? What do you tell yourself? What are your beliefs and thoughts as you move throughout your day? We all have that voice inside of us that helps us to work through difficulties we face. Many of the children we work with struggle to realize that they have the power to solve their own problems without asking for help. They many not have an inner voice or don't know how to develop it. Frustration brings difficult behaviors. But we are in a position help children have the power to problem-solve. We can help students to move from feeling helpless and overwhelmed to, 'I'm frustrated, what can I do to help myself?'


Sensory Corner: Sensory Modulation and Developmental Trauma
[Source Vital Links]

Our inborn fight, flight, freeze responses are automatic responses that help us cope when faced with dangerous situations. When we feel threatened, these subcortical mechanisms are triggered automatically. When triggered, our bodies experience an increase in physiological arousal and in muscular tension that hastens our ability to escape from the perceived threat, and or prepare our muscles to engage for fight. When we are unable to move away or strike back, in response to something dangerous, we are left with the option to freeze. The freeze response is the point where one becomes predisposed to traumatic 

Read the Rest of This Article Through a Link on our Blog

AAC Corner:  Behavioral Supports for Young Children
[Source:  PrAACtical AAC]
 
One of the biggest stressors for therapists and educators who work with AAC is dealing with challenging behavior. In today's post, we share a wonderful set of resources on positive approaches to preventing, minimizing, and de-escalating instances of challenging behavior.

Did You Get This From a Friend?

 

Sign Up For Your Copy of This Newsletter!
Would you like pediatric and school-based therapy tips, resources, articles, and news delivered to your computer once a week? Sign up here for our newsletter!

Sign up HERE
Quick Links to PediaStaff
If you would like to opt out of receiving this newsletter, there is a link located in the footer below. However, please note that once you've opted out, we will be unable to send you any future correspondence via newsletter.
Please Note:  The views and advice expressed in articles, videos and other pieces published in this newsletter are not necessarily the views and advice of PediaStaff or its employees but rather that of the author.  PediaStaff is not endorsing or implying agreement with the views or advice contained therein, rather presenting them for the independent analysis and information of its readers.